Site Search

Of Princeton's more than 160 endowed professorships and lectureships, four honor men who derived their fortunes from slave labor or contributed to the legacy of slavery in New Jersey and the United States.

Between 1746 and 1865, about 40% of Princeton students arrived from the slaveholding South. As college leaders recruited elite southerners, enrollment tracked the geographical spread of the slave economy.

James Collins Johnson, a fugitive slave freed after an 1843 trial in Princeton, became a prominent figure in town and on campus over the course of his many decades working at the College of New Jersey.

William Taylor, a black entrepreneur in Princeton in the first half of the 20th century, was the third and last in a line of independent African American vendors who sold refreshments to students. The nickname students used for Taylor (a racial slur) reflected the casual racism in Princeton was still very much present during the postbellum era, as in the days of the first campus vendor, former fugitive slave James Collins Johnson.

Princeton’s early students from Kentucky reflected their state’s ambivalent attitude toward slavery. Though many Kentuckians opposed the institution and the state never seceded from the Union, slavery did not end in Kentucky until the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865. Prominent state and national leaders from Kentucky, including Princeton alumni, also supported the Confederacy during the Civil War.